The end of the End
by kiyo-kyo
Summary: Eventual Shounen ai (Sasuxnaru)What happens during the final confrontation between Sasuke and Itachi? What happens after that?
1. chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Warning: Might lead to eventual Shonen Ai (sasuXnaru)

Spelling of terms might be wrong

Horrendous vocabulary and Grammer mistakes might be scatter about

The end of the end

Chapt 1

Haruno Sakura clasped her hand together. Gathering her chakra on to her palms, she set her muscles to work, flexing and extending digits into a series of seals before casting them down onto the injured ninja before her.

Sweat tricked down her forehead, generating a ticklish sensation which she longed to get rid of, yet, she can't afford to be distracted, not when the healing remain incomplete. Resisting the urge, she focused on the patient before her. The ninja had suffered a blown to his arm, resulting in a dislocated shoulder and numerous tears to his tendons. Under normal circumstances, treating such injury should have been easy for her, but considering the fight she had just went through and that this was her tenth patient after more serious cases that ate much of her remaining chakra, the task became more difficult.

Finally, the ligaments started healing and other medical nins were called to aid in setting a cast. Exhaustion overtook her soon after that and she stumbled away leaning upon a tree for support. Sliding down the trunk, she managed to pull her body into a sitting position, head resting backwards and arms wiping away sweat. She kept her eyes open reluctantly and took in her surrounding. Much of the damages had been cleared, seriously injured comrades had been deported back to the village, those who had sustained fewer injuries were currently receiving their treatment. And then there were the corpses, this triggered a wince from the girl as she recounted the lifeless bodies slumped upon the ground; they too had been transported back home, back to the village.

"Here." A voice disrupted the disturbing images and she looked up to find Shikamaru looming above her. Before she could react, a bottle was shoved into her hands and so was a package.

"You look like you need some water and food," the jounin said.

Sakura smiled in appreciation before uncapping the bottle and drowning a gulp full of water. Immediately, she felt much better and did not hesitate to show her pleasure with a loud sigh.

Shikamaru smiled at her response before drinking his own ration of water. It seemed like he needed it badly too and this must have applied to others too after what they have been through.

"Mm… Shikamaru…" Sakura muttered looking at the jounin who nodded in response urging her to continue. "The raid was successful right?"

After pausing to assess the situation, Shikamaru turned his attention back to the pink haired girl before drawling out an agreement lazily.

"But many from our side had died too." This set off another grunt of approve from the other boy.

"It can't be helped, Sakura. What we are dealing with calls for sacrifices, it can't be avoided, though after much planning with the others, we have managed to bring the death toll to the minimum." Shikamaru addressed, shuddering when he remembered his enemy, a powerful ninja from the mist country. Even when the konoha nins operated in a favorable position of 5 against 1, the effect went unnoticed as one by one they were brought down by the enemies.

"I understand, they were the Akatsuki after all…" Sakura replied.

Their raid tonight was against the Akatsuki, the secret organisation formed by some of the most wanted ninjas out there. The organization had been keeping itself well hidden from public for quite sometime now. They abstained from interfering in affairs of the country, and lurk within the shadows collecting information on various jutsu. But recently, right after the destruction of the sound village, they had decided to carry out their secret plan and the Hokage had decided to take them down before they should pulled any tricks. Thus the reason for tonight's raid.

The mission was risky, Sakura admitted. The information available was simply insufficient, not much was known about the member of the Akatsuki. It was as if they were playing an unfair game of hide and seek where the preys knew exactly where the opponent was while the predators set off with a veil across their eyes. The damages were huge indeed, but frankly, it could have been much worse, they might be totally destroyed.

Now, all members of the Akatsuki had been brought down, except for one…Itachi.

The man, being a sharingan user, seemed to have weaseled away from the battle easily, and only one of them was able to notice it and gave chase.

"Do you think he will be alright?" Sakura asked.

"Sasuke?"

During the battle with Orchimaru, Naruto was finally able to convince Sasuke to join forces with Konoha and together along with some other nins, they had managed to get rid of that snake for good. Sasuke did not return with them to the village though, he left right after the battle in his pursue for Akatsuki. In fact much of the information supplied to the village had been provided solely by Jiraiya and Sasuke. Not many knew that he had remained in contact with Naruto. He only returned tonight, for the final showdown.

" He had been gone for 4 hours now."

Eyeing the healer who had remained silent, Shikamaru chuckled as an attempt to comfort the girl. " Don't worry, he will be back." Making sure to have caught Sakura's attention he continued, "Besides Naruto went with him. He had promised time and time again that he will bring Sasuke back and he always kept his promise. Remember that's his nin way."

This earned him a smile from Sakura. "You are right. Naruto is with him, he will be alright."

Another moment of silent ensued right after and Shikamaru was beginning to regret approaching Sakura, women are so troublesome; their mood swings are highly unpredictable. Before he could distract the girl with something, Sakura stood up, fist clutching revealing white knuckles.

"This is so unfair, I should be with them, I promised. Why is it that Naruto always gets the good parts? Huh Shikamaru?"

It was then that Shikamaru realized how wrong he was about women needing protection. 'Women sure are resilient creatures', he noted, 'they just never give up.' Somehow, that sent a shiver down his spine.

Ignoring Shikamaru's dazed expression, Sakura continued to rant about how the two boys had always left her behind etc etc. She finally concluded much to Shikamaru's amusement "I guess I will have to wait till they come crawling back bruised and battered, begging for my healing, before I can show them who's the real queen here. Muhahahaha!"

Suddenly, their little conversation was disrupted as someone pointed out to a figure approaching their camp fast. Anxiously, the jounins scanned the figure wearily, bodies stiffening as they prepare for any attack. The nightly fog was an annoyance as it masked the features of the nin.

As the distance shortens, one managed to identify the unknown and shouted out " It's Uchiha!"

"Which one!"

"Sasuke!"

Not many lowered down their guard though, most still had not forgiven the younger Uchiha who had once betrayed the village and went to their most hated enemies from the sound village. It was Sakura and a few others who ran forward to welcome him with glee.

However upon approaching, they realized that something had gone horribly wrong. Naruto was slumped over Sasuke's arm, looking pale if not lifeless, his clothes was stained a dark red from blood and a large gaping wound was spread across his right shoulders.

Sakura's eyes widen, too shocked to react. She was pulled from her daze with Sasuke's scream.

"Hurry! Save Naruto!"


	2. chapter 2

Chapt 2

"He needs treatment! Uchiha, released him immediately."

"Uchiha can you hear me. Release him!"

It was a futile effort and the grip of the dark teenager on his teammate strengthened instead.

"Sasuke!"

Shikamaru growled and did the most obvious thing that had to be done: he manhandled Sasuke away forcefully. A surge of white surrounded the blond immediately as the medical nins flocked over to aid Sakura. An oxygen mask was pulled over Naruto's face, covering his nose and mouth.

"He is running low on blood! Prepare for blood transfusion immediately." Sakura yelled amidst from the chaos. While others scrambled to obtain the necessary equipment, Sakura tried frantically to search for a standing vein through the tanned skin of Naruto. With only minutes to spare, she had to find one quickly before the entire venous system collapse and she was desperate. _Hurry! Hurry! No! Not this one, its already down! Dammed. _Cursing silently, she ran her hands down Naruto's forearms quickly but not carelessly.

"Yes!" she gave a shout of triumph and grabbed for the tubing. Not bothering to disinfect it, she hastily inserted the needle under the skin and into the vein. A flow of blood streamed into the blonde's hand.

"He won't be able to last till the village in his condition. We will have to perform the operation here. Prepare the healing scroll now!" Sakura ordered.

_This is only the first step_, Sakura thought_, I am sorry Naruto, but I won't let you die so easily._ Reaching for a Kunai, she cut off a tuft of blond hair from Naruto.

**ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP**

Darkness. Was all he could see when he opened his eyes. Blinking, he sat upright, palms pushing against the concrete floor. It felt chilling cold and he flinched, pulling his hands away. He scrambled to his feet and scanned his surrounding; it was a futile effort for all he could see was blackness that stretched to what seemed like eternity.

Scratching his head, he forced himself to think, an action that was a seldom occurrence throughout his life. _Where is this place?_ _What happened? _Suddenly a loud growl erupted, echoing as the waves were reflected from invisible boundaries.

Then he remembered, this familiar sense of nothingness etched deep in his memory. Grinning, he slowly reached out his hands and took a step forward. Nothing. It doesn't matter anyway, he will soon find something solid. With this reassurance, he gained courage and stride forward carefully, towards the source of the sound.

**ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP**

"How is he doing?"

"The heart rate has finally steadied. But the wound has not healed yet."

"Good." Sakura whispered as she gazed at the blond in the middle of the scroll.

Chains of characters had been scribbled across his chest, reaching to the point of the wound. And in turn, these chains were linked to more characters, which were drawn across the scroll. Chakra was then channeled from the eight main directions through the characters, which act as a medium, into Naruto, stabling his heartbeat. It was a relatively simple process. The next task would be harder.

By using Naruto's hair as a source for amino acids, they are required to create new news to replace the damaged ones in the wound. The amount of cells resulted would be little but they are only required to close the wound, the rest of the healing could be done when Naruto is out of his critical condition. However in order to do so, it would need precise control of chakra and undistracted attention of the medical crew. A grueling task for most of the nins whom like Sakura, had almost exhaust their energy, both physically and mentally.

"Let's get ready for the next part." Sakura ordered, signaling a change of medical nins to get into their position. Attempting to focus her chakra again, she was stopped by a hand on her wrist. She turned around to find brown eyes smiling at her.

"Wait. We will take your place." The women spoke.

"Shizune sempai! Why…"

"The Hokage sent ask after she heard what happened to Naruto. Take you and your medical team for rest now, we will take over." Shizune winked as she tilt her head to where another group of newly arrived medical nins were.

"Leave it to us, we will bring him back."

**ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP**

Dressed in navy blue, Uchiha Sasuke sat in the wilderness, eyes focusing on the makeup tent a short distance away. Damned those medical nins, they had refused all entry into the tent, saying something about infections and other stuffs. It was not as if their robes were clean, especially not after a battle, when the white outfits were stained with blood from other patients and mud as they kneeled to provide treatment. It was all a fraud, an attempt to get him away from Naruto.

It was never a disturbing notion to know that mistrust still hung in the air between him and the village he grew up in. Many still doubted his credibility and he understood their reluctance in believing him again. He was the younger brother of a genius that massacred his whole clan, a missing nin who almost killed his best friend while trying to get away, a past aide of Orochimaru. It was understandable that the villagers will connect one thing to another; after all it was a human nature. That's why he chose to remain away from the village, never going back.

Ironically, he seemed to finally realize his brother hatred towards the villagers, foolish humans who fail to judge for themselves. In both his and Naruto's situation, there was never a hint of sensitivity and consideration; Naruto's was just the Kyuubi and he, the last of Konoha's treasured bloodline. His bloodline might have been the only reason why the village accepted him during his childhood, without it he would have been termed 'the brother of the murderer' not as a genius.

Despite that, the village was something that Naruto had wanted to protect, something he treasured and something he would give his life for. An equivalent to the feeling Sasuke had for Naruto himself. The feelings were weird even after he had come into acceptance with it. It was confusing and he did not know how or when it happened, but only knew that it happened. It seemed to have been there forever, just waiting to be discovered, to be realized. And these feelings were precisely another reason as to why he was tracking down the Akatsuki over the past few months. He wanted to kill Itachi, revenge his clan and lastly to protect his best friend and his beloved village.

Closing his eyes, he punched the ground. "Just let me stay by that idiot." He whispered, it was not as if he were to try that stunt he did three years ago, it is different now. Definitely different.

Grass rustled under feet and the Uchiha turned around, Sharingan spinning wildly and blood red, while hand rested on kunai preparing for attack. His body was crouched low and chakra focused on his feet, a perfect posture, suitable for defend and attacks. It was a skill he had learned in his training with Orochimaru, a habit he acquired from the assassination mission he had performed. It was a position for him to kill.

"Relax." A lazy voice drawled.

_Nara_, recognition dawned upon him. His body relaxes, though his hands were still place near his weapon pouch. It was another habit that he had acquired, a tendency to be wary of others.

"How are your wounds?" Shikamaru asked, as a more formal greeting instead of a concerned gesture.

Sasuke chose to remain silent. "I will treat that as a yes then." Shikamaru stated before sitting down. An awkward silent soon ensued.

"Shizune's team had just arrived." Shikamaru said, eyes observing Sasuke for a sign. There was none and the other teenager remained stoic. "Regarding Naruto's condition…"_ Ha!_ Shikamaru smirked to himself as a brief flash of concern hurried through Sasuke's eyes. "He seemed to be getting better." Shikamaru continued and was awarded with a brief glimpse of relief in Sasuke's eyes. _So easy to read, _he chuckled

"Anyway lets get down to business." He pulled his face into a solemn manner; it was really troublesome for him to flex all his facial muscles. But it was a skill he had to use concerning important matters or no one will pay him any serious attention. "What happened to Itachi?"

An expected question, Sasuke thought. He ran his eyes through his right hand, staring at it, before focusing his attention back to Shikamaru.

"He's dead. I killed him."

**ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP**

Note: Thanks for reviews. I have madeadjustments to the setting, sorry for any inconvenience caused. By the way, the part of this chapter's plot about creating new cells are scientifically wrong. It was all created by me. Regarding the healing scroll, it was something from volume 26, the part where Neji was being healed. There is not much of a plot in this chapter, more emotional thoughts, I will try tostart placing the real plottogether in words over the next chapter. It might be a long time before the next update though. Sorry.


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